Feathers, Glorious and Splendid (by Sexghosts)
by CatandKaraForever
Summary: Kara was intimately familiar with the nature of secrets, how their desire for air and sunlight distinguished them from information simply forgotten, tucked away in some corner of a dusty attic for someone to not-care about when they stumbled upon it.


**Feathers, Glorious, and Splendid (by Sexghosts)**

 **Fandom: Supergirl  
Author: Sexghosts (Archive of Our Own author, this work is merely copied to get more publicity for them)**

 **Rating: T**

Now, the real learning would begin. Kara, learning a new job, traffic manager, that would still keep her close to Cat's ear and presence, but was the beginning of Cat allowing her to fly within the steel and glass walls of CatCo as easily as she did across the skies of National City. Cat, learning the truth and depth of Kara's loss; the journey across the galaxy as her world collapsed in fire, the betrayal of her family, the slow ebbing away of even the gods she was raised with, arriving on a strange world to find that the only purpose she had left had been taken from her.

Cat, learning what it felt like to be three instead of the two that she and Carter had been for so long, learning how to make proper burgers and sear a steak until it was just perfect. Kara, learning what the hell an InSinkerator was and how NOT to use it (and being grateful that she had been standing in between Cat and the spray of scalding hot water when her first attempt to use it went horribly awry).

Cat, learning that loving a Kryptonian wasn't any different from loving a human and that sometimes she sucked at it just the same. There were times she would ride Kara too hard, not because she wanted to but because she didn't always know the difference between pushing someone and pushing them away. Sometimes it was hard to get her head around how small and soft and human Kara felt when they were lying in bed together, knowing that she was a force of nature when she wanted to be. And sometimes, when she wasn't even trying.

Kara, learning to be naked with someone and feel everything, sometimes even letting herself feel too much because that was its own kind of joy. Learning to lower her filters, quicker and easier every time she felt Cat's hand on her shoulder, Cat's lips against the back of her neck. They still had to be secretive, inasmuch as it was possible. They still found it difficult at times to fold what they meant to each other into something that fit between their bodies when they kissed. Yet her path had taken her light years and miles and decades, across landscapes of despair and loneliness, and deposited her here; at Cat Grant's company, in her capable hands, in her arms, in her bed. And Kara may have lost her Kryptonian gods, but she never shook off the belief that nothing happened by accident.

Alex had been the first, outside the two of them, to know what was happening, but Carter was close on her heels.

Kara shouldn't have been surprised, since she'd made a point of including him in their outings on weekends that he wasn't with his father; they'd gone kite flying, gone to the beach, to the place in Las Perdidas that had all the moon bounces, where she may or may not have let them hover in the air on a few jumps for just a split second too long.

But it still broadsided her the evening he dropped it casually into her lap. She'd watched quietly while Cat was helping him comb through an essay and tighten it up, feeling strangely wistful. Carter wasn't far from the age she was when she'd been put in that pod. When Cat had finished giving him her notes, she tousled his hair lovingly and then excused herself to the bathroom, and Kara set a chocolate milk down in front of him.

"Thanks," he said with a small smile. He drank a long pull and watched while Kara washed the few dishes that were in the sink. "I'm really glad you and my mom are together," he finally remarked as she was drying the last glass.

She nearly dropped it. "What?"

He gazed back at her, his face calm and sweet. "It's ok. She didn't tell me or anything, but … I'm not a little kid, you know."

Kara was speechless. Granted, she'd been new to Earth when she was his age, but she was pretty sure she hadn't been anywhere near as savvy about Kryptonian life either. "Oh!" she managed to say, after a stunned moment. "Right, of course you're not."

"She just seems happy," he went on. "She's had a couple of boyfriends…"

"John Stamos?" Kara recalled.

"Yeah, Uncle John, he was okay. But he wasn't as cool as you."

She saw a little twinkle in those clear eyes. She could never have imagined that she'd be so pleased about an eleven year old boy telling her she was cooler than John Stamos.

"Anyway, she didn't ever laugh as much with him or any of those other guys as she does with you. She actually relaxes with you sometimes, which is weird." He slurped at the end of his chocolate milk. "I mean, you know. In a good way."

Kara grinned at him.

"But listen, don't tell my mom I said that to you, ok? I know she's gonna want to sit me down and _explain_ and do that all that Mom stuff, and I don't want to take that away from her."

What a kid. What a sweet, scary-smart kid.

Cat returned from the bathroom and saw the dumb smile on Kara's face. "Oh, what now? Did Carter just tell you that the Backstreet Boys are having a reunion?"

"Um, no… he was just telling me about a… a cat video…" Kara laughed, and then brushed past her. "I think I need the bathroom too."

Cat knew by now that "cat video" was code for "something I don't want to tell you right now".

Kara was intimately familiar with the nature of secrets, how their desire for air and sunlight distinguished them from information simply forgotten, tucked away in some corner of a dusty attic for someone to not-care about when they stumbled upon it. Her powers were a secret, for more than half her life, a blazing-hot coal tucked in her jacket, and she'd walked around as a child and then as an adult, all the while swearing she could smell the fabric burning. They needed to get out and do what they were meant to do. Now the world had seen her powers, but her identity was still a secret, except to a few. This secret sat in a different place, wrapped in a different fabric, burned less, but some anxious, squirrelly part of her hated it just as much.

Her romance with Cat, though, was a peculiar sort of semi-secret. Cat was neither private nor public about her bisexuality, but occupied some other space. She had less than no interest in being any sort of pillar of the queer community – she had an empire to run. And Kara had nimbly followed her lead when it came to when and where they could be demonstrative, and to what to degree. It was a relatively simple radiating map with CatCo Plaza at its epicenter.

No affection of any kind within a twenty block radius of the CatCo Building. Hand-holding was fine in most other parts of town. But in the Leda District, where the blocks were dotted with classy women's clubs named after famous lesbian novels, they could turn heads together on a dance floor; Kara with her height and raw, fresh beauty, and Cat, with her expensively perfumed grace and style, and of course, all of that flaxen hair catching the colors of the lights as they wrapped themselves up in each other, spun each other, Kara occasionally succumbing to the temptation to lift Cat and twirl her around.

She would lay in bed afterwards, reflecting on how magical those evenings were, mostly because of how utterly normal she felt. It was secrets, their weight, their heat, that distorted the world and made her feel freakish, she realized. And while she had more than her share, at least when she was dancing with Cat at Tipping Velvet, what they had wasn't a secret. It could breathe, be what it was, show its feathers, glorious and splendid.

On this particular evening, they'd made love after getting back to Cat's place, as was often their habit after dancing. Her head was slowly clearing from the delirious rush of orgasm, and she was desperately clinging to that rapidly fading magic.

"Cat," she began uncomfortably. "Why are we still a secret?"

Cat flicked a hair off of Kara's face. "We're not a secret, darling, we're just discreet."

"Well, why are we that?"

"You know why," Cat answered with a bored tone.

"Tell me again."

"Because we still have a professional relationship."

"So what?"

"You don't want people to think you were promoted because we were sleeping together. I don't want people thinking my decisions are compromised by the fact that I'm sleeping with a much younger employee."

"Right, because then the stock underperforms and I'm the next Lehman Brothers." Kara shifted onto her side and looked at Cat in the dark. "So what if I was just Supergirl, would we still have to be 'discreet'?"

Cat shook her head. "Why discuss the hypothetical, Kara? You were determined to keep your job, remember? You're not just Supergirl. You're Kara Danvers, too. And you seem to want to stay that way."

Kara sighed. "Sometimes that feels like too much work. Too many secrets to keep."

"I have to keep secrets, too, Kara."

"Yeah, well … maybe I'm tired of being one of them."

Cat sat up and drew the sheet up to her chest. "Kara, what's the solution? We get hitched?"

"Supreme Court says it's legal," Kara jousted.

"You start showing up in full Supergirl regalia as my date to every public event I attend?"

Kara's lips curled into a little smile at this, despite the sarcasm in Cat's voice. "What part of that sounds bad to you?"

Cat shook her head and kissed her once, dropping it half on Kara's lips and half on her chin. "None of it, darling, but it's intensely impractical."

"I know." Kara considered her for a long moment. There was another consideration, one which neither of them had spoken out loud thus far, but she supposed it was time to raise it. "And let's not forget, Supergirl has enemies that Kara Danvers doesn't."

There was a long pause during which she could hear Cat's heartbeat skip once, and then continue on, her voice becoming clipped. "And Cat Grant isn't afraid of any of them."

"Why are you talking about yourself in the third person?"

Cat softened her tone a little. "Why are _you_ ? _You_ are Supergirl. _And_ you're Kara Danvers. You don't need to negotiate between the two like you're a child of divorced parents."

"I'm starting to wonder if I don't need a therapist myself," Kara remarked dryly.

"Well," Cat sighed, "I do know a good one. That old hippie chaps my ass, but she's perceptive as hell."

Kara scooted closer to Cat and laid her head against her shoulder. "I know." She was an orphan, a hero, a girl who sincerely loved art and politics and journalism and was always sober and giggled a lot, but didn't laugh enough to completely erase the wounds that time and fate had stamped on her. She was a girl who could obey a boss but defy gravity, who gave her heart and faith to Cat Grant, turning her lover's wisdom over in her head as she streaked through the wispy clouds at sunset. And all she wanted was to give, and give, and give. But somehow, her heart was still full.

Cat Grant wasn't sure she wanted to publicly be Kara Danvers's lover, but she couldn't be Supergirl's lover. It was simply too dangerous right now. But at some point, all secrets burn their way through, craving the air.

They were working late. Cat's new assistant was long gone, and so was everyone else, and Kara was in Cat's office, in her new capacity as traffic manager. Cat had learned of Kara's talents as a researcher, and so, they were plugging away together, red-teaming a story about the government burying evidence of life on Mars that CatTV was trying to run as a feature in Shazia Dhouri's Sunday morning broadcast. And they were doing so ruthlessly, line by line, checking every "if," every "to," every comma, because any time you were handling a government cover-up story, you had to treat it like… well, kryptonite, because that's what it would be, for CatTV and for Shazia Dhouri's career if the story turned out to have holes. "We can't afford to be Dan Rathered on this," Cat grumbled, wading through the pages of research, tapping on her glasses with a second pair of glasses.

Kara could hear the stress in Cat's voice, and she instinctively got up and went to the shelves on the right hand side of the office where Cat kept her bar, poured off a shot of scotch out of a bottle that lived in a velvet bag, and set it on the desk in front of her.

Cat took it and sipped. "You're not my assistant anymore," she scolded gently.

"You're welcome," Kara poked back. She went around behind Cat's chair and started massaging her shoulders.

"Kara…" Cat began to object, but then Kara's fingers found their way to that knot that even Cat's healthy dose of Lexapro couldn't unwind, and began wringing the tension out of it.

"I know, no _onsite touching_ ," Kara chuckled, quoting one of Cat's "rules". "But come on, there's nobody here."

Cat groaned in reply and then melted a little under Kara's fingers, the way Kara enjoyed; and then when Cat tilted her head to the side, stretching the spot that Kara was kneading, Kara leaned down and kissed the exposed side of her neck.

"Kara, rules," Cat groaned, but her heart wasn't in it.

Lost for a moment in each other, they were both caught off guard to hear, "Miss Grant! Since you're still here, I thought maybe you…"

They both jumped, startled to look up and find Winn Schott Jr., standing in the door to Cat's office, the rest of a sentence trying to climb back into his gaping mouth.


End file.
